Back in August, then-new Bank of England Governor Mark Carney linked U.K. base rates to unemployment and pledged, just about, not to consider lifting Bank Rate off the 0.5% canvas its been slumped on since early 2009. It was the bank’s judgement that we’d probably need to wait until 2016 before the jobless total got that low.

Despite the clear implication that his forward guidance now suggests a much earlier rise in base rates, Governor Mark Carney was at pains to stress that the threshold, whenever breached, is not an automatic trigger. He said the threshold was a ‘staging post’ to rate normalization, and that the Monetary Policy Committee won’t be considering higher rates until it gives way.

Acknowledging the U.K.’s better economic performance, the Bank raised its growth forecasts for 2013 to 1.6% from 1.4%, and for 2014 to 2.8% from 2.5. The call for 2016’s remained steady at 2.3%.

Sterling markets had long thought that the Bank’s August call was more than a little pessimistic given the steady stream of better economic data from the U.K.. This week alone we have seen a surprise fall in inflation and a sharper than expected fall in unemployment.

The yield spread between ten-year gilts and their German counterpart widened to 1.05 percentage points, and is flirting with five year highs. Whenever U.K. rates head north, it seems, markets are pretty sure it will be a long time before the euro zone’s follow them.